Thursday, May 5, 2016

American Genre's

Colonial period (Beginnings to 1820)
  1. Characteristics
    • Puritanism
    • Mostly diaries and histories, looking for providence of God
    • Saw religion as a personal, inner experience
    • Believed in original sin and elect who would be saved
    • Plain style of writing
    • Predestination/Calvin (Calvinism: TULIP)
    • The Enlightenment (skeptical of authority)
  2. Works
    • [core] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/Anne Bradstreet's poetry
Romantic Period (1820-1865)
  1. Characteristics
    • Valued feeling, intuition, idealism, and inductive reasoning
    • Place faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination
    • Transcendentalism (sublime, seek unspoiled nature as a path of spirituality)
    • Used dark and supernatural themes/settings (gothic style)
  2. Works
    • [core] The Scarlett Letter/Young Goodman Brown/ The Birth-Mark/ Resistance to Civil Government/Walt Whitman's Poems
Realistic Period (1865-1914)
  1. Characteristics
    • Renders reality closely, plots and characters are more plausible
    • sought to explain behavior [psychology/socially]
    • Diction is natural
  2. Works
    • [core] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/The Awakening/Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass/Emily Dickinson's poetry
Modern Period (1914-1950)
  1. Characteristics
    • Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream. The independence, self-reliant, individual with triumph
    • Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form over the traditional
    • Interest in the inner workings of the human mind (stream of consciousness)
    • Harlem Renaissance
  2. Works
    • [core] The Sound and the Fury/Their Eyes Were Watching God/T.S. Eliot's poetry/Langston Hughes's poetry/Robert Frost's poetry/A Streetcar Named Desire
Post WWII (1950-present)
  1. Characteristics
    • The impact of technology
    • Sense that little is unique, culture endlessly duplicates the copies itself
    • New literary forms and techniques: works composed of only dialogue or combining fiction and nonfiction, experimenting with physical appearance of their work
  2. Works
    • [core] Beloved/ Flannery O'Connor's work/ Gwendolyn Brooks' poetry/ Allen Ginsberg's poetry/M. Butterfly 



Eras, Movements, and themes in American Literature
  • Themes:
    • Identity (individual and national and cultural heritage)
    • Clash of cultures
    • Environment/Wilderness
    • Traditions
      • Women's
      • African American
      • Native American
    • Male/Female Relationships/Family
    • According to Era
      • Puritan: Sin, Guilt, Delight
      • Colonial: National identity, Revolution, Enlightenment Rationality
      • Transcendentalism: The unseen, Individuality, Non-conformity
      • Romantic: Dark psychology, quest, isolation, truth, wilderness
      • Realist: Social condition, women question, class ideology, family
      • Naturalist: Determinism vs Free Will, urban and industrial conditions
      • Modernist: Spiritual and social alienation, Art as religion, form
      • Harlem Renaissance: African American Identity, Double-consciousness
      • Post-Modernism: The game, meta-fiction, violence
      • Ethnic literature: cross cultural identity, manhood, cultural forms
    • Religion
    • Violence
    • Quest vs. Meaninglessness
  • Era and movements:
    • Ancient Native American Tales and songs
    • Puritan literature (1620-1700)
      • Bradstreet
      • Taylor
      • Bradford
      • Rowlandson
    • Colonial Literature (1700-1800) Enlightenment
      • Wheatley
      • Ashbridge
      • Edwards (last of the Puritans, but in the 18th C)
      • de Crevecoeur
      • Franklin
      • Equiano
    • Pre-Romantics (1820's)
      • Irving 
      • Cooper
    • Transcendentalist literature (1840's)
      • Thoreau
      • Emerson
      • Fuller
    • Romantic Literature (1830's-1850's)
      • (Brockden Brown - much earlier)
      • Poe
      • Hawthorne
      • Melville
      • Whitman (and Transcendentalist)
      • Bryant
      • Longfellow
      • Whittier
      • Stowe (a realist before her time)
    • Southwestern Humor (is this the right title?)
      • George Washington Harris
      • Joel Chandler Harris
      • Cable
    • Native American Literature (19th C)
      • Douglass
      • Wilson
      • Jacobs
      • Dunbar
      • Harper
      • Chestnutt
      • Dunbar-Nelson
      • DuBois
    • People who can't be assigned surely (19th C)
      • Alcott (a realist during the romantic era? Sensationalist?)
      • Davis (realist or romantic?)
      • Dickinson (realist? romantic? or just herself?)
      • Gilman (feminist, not a realist but in that era)
      • Sui-Sin Far (Asian American - a realist?)
    • Realist and Naturalist Literature (including regionalism and psychological realism)
      • Twain (regionalism)
      • Jewett (regionalism)
      • Freeman (regionalism)
      • Harte (regionalism)
      • Oskison (regionalism)
      • Garland (regionalism)
      • Howells
      • Chopin
      • Austin
      • Norris (Naturalism)
      • James (Psychological realism)
      • Crane (naturalism)
      • Dreiser (naturalism)
      • Wahrton (psychological realism)
      • (Do we add Alcott, Davis, Gilman, Sui Sin Far, Dickinson?)
    • Modernist Literature
      • Faulkner (fiction)
      • Hemingway
      • Anderson
      • Fitzgerald
      • Cather
      • Stein (fiction and poetry)
      • Steinbeck
      • [Neihardt] (see below, Nat Am Renaissance)
      • O'Neill (drama)
      • Eliot (poetry)
      • Frost
      • Moore
      • WC Williams
      • Stevens
      • H.D.
      • Pound
      • Millay
      • Jeffers
      • Lowell
      • Bogan
      • Rukeyser
      • Cummings
    • Harlem Renaissance Literature
      • Fiction
        • Hurston
        • Larson
        • Toomer
      • Poetry
        • Hughes
        • Cullen
        • McKay
    • Contemporary African American Literature
      • Fiction
        • R. Wright
        • Ellison
        • Baldwin
        • Bambara
        • Walker
        • Morrison
      • Poetry
        • Hayden
        • Dove
        • Clifton
        • Baraka
        • Brooks
      • Drama
        • Hansberry
        • Wilson
        • Shange
    • Contemporary Native American Literature (Native American Renaissance)
      • [Neihardt–an as-told-to autobiography of the 1930's that became well read in the 1960's]
      • Fiction
        • Momaday
        • Erdrich
        • Silko
        • Vizenor
      • Poetry
        • Rios
        • S. Ortiz
        • Harjo
        • Rose
        • Hogan
    •  Other 20th C Ethnic Literature
      • Fiction
        • Malamud
        • Mukherjee
        • Kingston
        • Alvarez
      • Poetry
        • L.Y. Lee
        • Mora
      • Drama
        • Hwang
    • Contemporary Fiction (Some are post-modernist, metafictionist, most are not)
      • O'Connor
      • Cheever
      • Mason
      • Paley
      • Welty
      • LeGuin
      • Ford
      • J. Williams
      • Adams
      • Barthelme
      • Olsen
      • Porter
      • Barth
      • O'Brien
      • Updike
      • TC Boyle
      • Heller
      • Irving
      • Bellow
      • C. Johnson
      • Kennedy
      • Nabokov
      • Pynchon
      • Smiley
      • Vonnegut
    • Contemporary Poetry
      • Roethke
      • Bishop
      • Jarrell
      • Wilbur
      • Sexton
      • Ginsberg
      • Rich
      • Simic
      • Oliver
      • Strafford
      • Nye
      • Collins
      • J. Wright
      • Plath
      • Kumin
      • Hall
      • Levertov
      • Weigl
      • Hirsch
    • Contemporary Drama
      • Miller
      • T. Williams
      • Albee
      • Rice
      • Hellman
      • Shepard
      • Wilder

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